Apotheosis
by Metronomeblue
Summary: "The goal is to end up somewhere entirely different from where you began." Mid-s2 AU; Hook finally gets his hands on the Dark One's dagger and uses it to devastating affect. Captain Swan.
1. I've Always Missed

A/N: many thanks to Flpirate305 for pointing out that my html was showing! All fixed now, I hope.

Emma was very much unsure of what Hook was going to do once he was released from the hospital. He had, after all, attempted to kill Gold and then Belle several times over before being hit by a remarkably well-timed car and then incapacitated. She watched from the doorway as an orderly she didn't know the name of uncuffed him from the bed. He flashed her a charming smile and thanked her cordially before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and easing himself upright. Her eyes flicked coolly over the soft cast on his leg and the way he held his left arm. She pressed her mouth together in sympathy, tracing the sickly pink-blue of the bruises fading on his cheek and examining the blood that had drained from the scrape on his forehead to settle darkly around his eyes.

For a moment she could almost forget she didn't care.

His head started to turn towards her, and she managed to look away first.

"Ah, Swan." He sounded cheery enough, but there was strain in his voice when he said her name. It was telling. He knew it, and cleared his throat as he bent to tie up his boots. Emma crossed her arms and stepped into the room. The click of her shoes on the white floor was unnerving. Hospitals were a river of ambient noise, and she found that any one sound that stood out was disturbing.

"Heard you were being released today," he looked up for a second, and she caught the flash of his eyes. "Thought I'd stop by and remind you that murder's not a great plan when you're barely out of the woods yourself."

"Oh?" His smile was more genuine now, and more terrible. He had finished with the laces and was pulling up the leather tongues of his boots. "I had no idea. I'll keep that in mind when I decide to kill someone innocent." He stood, finally, and though he was several inches taller, there was a faded look to him that made him seem light and hollow.

"We have laws here," she hissed, leaning in to look him in the eye. "And they involve putting you in prison if you kill anyone."

"Do you really think your prison can hold me?" He replied, leaning in himself until the few inches between them were dark and she could feel his labored breaths on her mouth.

"In your condition?" She scoffed, stepping back. "Not much of a challenge." She turned smoothly, striding away at a pace she hoped wasn't too eager. The click of her heels followed her, like an unsettling reminder of his hand in hers and the sound of his laughter choked with blood on a cold, wet road.

Behind her, Hook leaned back slowly, his spine lengthening inch by painful inch until he was at his full height again. He sighed.

"I'm sorry, Swan," he muttered, pulling her gun from his pocket with a trembling hand. "I really am." A nurse walked past, and he turned, pretending to look at himself in a mirror. All he saw, though, was the smug grin on the Crocodile's face as his pretty little Belle convinced him to walk away and leave him bleeding on the deck of his own ship. The gun slid home in his belt like a dagger to sheath.

He waited in the atrium for some ten minutes, drinking a little paper cup of water until he heard the distinctive slam of Emma's car door and the rumble of the engine. Then, stiffening his injured leg, he swept from the hospital with passable stealth. His leg wasn't quite healed, and still made slight scraping noises on the ground as he walked quickly, quietly, to the much-despised pawn shop. In the back of his mind he heard himself laugh, three hundred years younger, at a man who limped meekly past.

"Pathetic!" He had shouted, taking a swig from a near-empty bottle of rum. "That's what you are, mate. How can you live with yourself?" He spun on a drunken heel. "How can you live at all?"

The man had looked at him with resenting, dark eyes. "With great difficulty, sir," he had said tightly, "just as anyone else does."

He had gone on his way, then, to a tavern and a woman who would irrevocably alter his very soul- provided he had had one in the first place. He hadn't known then, hadn't known anything, but those angry, dark eyes would one day be smug and triumphant, looking down at him in shades of sickly gold.

He reached Gold's shop. Standing there, across the street, dyed dark beneath the light of a streetlamp, he could see the blue of the moonlight and the dark of the shadows. The gun was heavy and feather-light in his pocket. It wouldn't be the first time he killed someone, and despite what Emma said he wasn't very good at staying in jail. It wasn't material or heavenly consequences that were holding him back. It was the idea of seeing her face, twisted with horror and disgust, as she forced him, bloodstained and broken, into a cage and shrouded him in darkness. He knew the darkness wouldn't hold, that the cage could be broken, that blood could be washed away and bones could be mended. But Emma could not. If he lost whatever trust she still had in him, that couldn't be fixed with thread and plaster or rum and a handkerchief any more than his hand could grow back or Milah could return to life.

Milah. The thought of her, bowed and fading in his arms as her last breath whistled out in his name- it returned his resolve, strengthened his hatred, burned in him like steel and fire. He crossed the street, stepping out of the false light and into true darkness, cool shadow.

He slipped his hook through the crack of the door, pinning the bell to the doorframe. Once that was done, he pushed it open, just wide enough for him to slide through with a quiet rasp and thin rustle. He closed it carefully behind him, and stepped over the panel that had creaked dreadfully when Gold had stepped on it. The counter loomed ahead of him, a solid brick of darkness in the mottled silver-blue patches of light. Sliding his hands down the drawers, he stopped at the last. It pulled out, lined with deep blue velvet and cushioning a long, tightly-wrapped package.

"Ah-ha," he crooned, lifting the dagger lovingly from it's resting place and using his hook to unfold the black cloth it had been shrouded in. "Well hello."

It trembled in his hand, throwing waves of magic around the room, washing over him, the objects, anything in reach. It was as if the moment he picked it up it had become a part of him, as much as his aching leg or his hook. The magic flowed through him, lightening his doubts, eradicating his fears, soothing his pain. As if it wanted him to hold it, wanted him to use it, to bathe it in blood and revenge and desperation. Killian adjusted his grip on it and swallowed. His heart thrummed with power, hollow and waiting to be filled with magic and darkness and the blood of others.

He obliged.

"Oh, Dark One," he called, lifting the dagger to the shivering moonlight. "Oh, Crocodile!" And then, bringing the dagger down on a glass case with a resounding crash, "Oh Rumplestiltskin!" The glass shattered into sand, blowing over Killian's boots like deadly sugar, razor-sharp and begging to be inhaled. He didn't even notice, eyes fixed on Rumplestiltskin as the man he'd been waiting to kill for three hundred years bowed to him, low and deep and sardonic every inch down.

"You called?" He sneered, the nervousness in being compelled after so long leaking through his anger. He stared at Killian as the other man stepped forward. Killian looked him up and down, memorized every second of this moment, then smiled.

"I did," Killian grinned, and thrust the blade deep into his heart, barrelling up through the ribcage, the stomach, the lungs, until he could feel the blood flowing over his hand. Gold grasped his hand with both of his own.

"You don't know, do you?" He asked, words twisted by the blood in his mouth. His smile grew wider and wider, teeth sharp and turning red with blood. He snapped his fingers weakly, and miles away, Emma's phone rang. "You don't know," he laughed, grasping Killian's jacket tightly with his dying strength.

"I don't know what?" Killian asked roughly, twisting the curved blade deeper into his slow-beating heart.

"You'll see soon enough," the Crocodile laughed, falling to his knees.

Emma turned her car, speeding the thirty seconds to Gold's shop. She was out of the car in seconds, urged on by some feeling, some instinct telling her to move move move now, or it'll be too late. She almost made it, too, hearing Gold's last, rasping breath under the pleasant tinkle of the bell. She stopped in her tracks, eyes fixed on Killian, hurt leg splayed at a strange angle, blood smeared over the back of his coat where Gold had held him. He was bent over the man, and there was a pool of blood soaking through his trousers.

"Hook," she asked, breathing heavy. Her gun was fixed on him as he stood, though she doubted it would have any affect now.

His hands were covered in blood, as were his shirt and vest. They dripped as he stood, and his leg straightened as it rose from the floor. The arm he had been holding close in pain only an hour ago was hanging loose with a silver, swirling dagger in hand. It was when their eyes met, though, that she really understood. The two black eyes he'd been sporting faded from deep purple to navy blue to magenta, then gold and green until they healed completely. The scrape on his forehead disappeared, and his split lip knitted itself back together. The hook on his hand was surrounded by black fabric, then pale gossamer, like a cocoon, and then finally it dangled from new fingertips like an afterthought. She looked up from his hand in distress, hardly able to fathom what was occurring.

He looked at her, and his eyes were gold.


	2. Cleaning your Soul

Emma took another step forward, gun still pointed firmly at his head. "Hook?" She asked, reaching her other hand towards him. Absentmindedly, he reached out his new right hand out to drop his hook into her palm. With infinite care and tenderness, he closed her fingers around it. She closed her eyes as if struck, then looked up at him. His eyes were a swirling, blazing gold, so different from their bright sky blue of before. He blinked at her, then stroked one finger from the barrel of her gun up to the trigger, where her finger rested just to the side. She snapped away from the quiet moment they had shared and let go, letting her gun fall just as it dissolved into ash.

"Hook, this isn't who you are," she tried, hand still gripping his hook like a lifeline. He nodded slowly, a smirk growing on his face.

"Yes it is." He smiled widely at her, looking absurdly satisfied with himself.

"No it's not," she said, automatically. He pouted at her and drew back a little as if offended.

"Yes it is!" He insisted, stepping forward.

"No!" She shouted, somewhat overcome with Gold's sudden death and Hook's weird transformation and the fact that he had magic now for Christ's sake. "It isn't!" She stepped forward, fists clenched at her sides.

"Yes! It is!" He protested, moving a step forward, too.

"No it isn't!" She hissed, nose-to-nose with him now, staring furiously into those newly-molten eyes.

"Then what is?" He asked flippantly, smirking mere inches from her mouth, resting his forehead on hers. "How would you know, Swan? You barely know me."

"I know you better than you think," Emma whispered bitterly, snatching the dagger from his hand and stepping back. His eyes widened dangerously, and he lifted a hand. "No magic!" He lowered it, seething. "You'll come with me, and you'll keep the handcuffs on, and you won't try to escape," she told him, trying to ignore the bloodlust rushing through her, the sensation of total dominion over someone else like drugs in her veins. The dagger burned in her hand, and Hook made a small bow to her.

"Milady," he ground out through his teeth. She pulled his hands- old and new- behind him with minimal effort, and slid them carefully into the handcuffs. The dagger she slid into an evidence bag she found in her pocket. He walked obligingly in front of her all the way out to the car, where she pushed him into the back. She tossed the dagger onto the passenger seat, then opened the back door for him. He bent obligingly to get into the car, but he was so tall she had to press his head down to help him in. Sat there, her hand lingered just a little in his hair, her fingers pulling gently against his scalp as they swept away. She turned back to the shop to call the hospital and David, but then stopped for a moment.

"I don't want to, you know." He looked back at her, still and stiff in faint orange light. She frowned, lips pulled wide and tight, though he couldn't see it. "I don't want to force you, but if I don't I don't know how else to stop you from disappearing." He looked down, as if confused by something, then up at her, still facing away. She cleared her throat, than kept walking.

Closing the door behind her, Emma sighed, flicking on the light switch. "You idot," she shook her head. "You didn't see it coming, did you?" Gold lay on his back, hands cupping the wound where a dagger used to be. She pushed her hair away from her face, so tired and sad and worn. She knelt down, looking more closely at the glassy sand on the floor and the look on Gold's face. He wore a wide, manic smile. "You old bastard," she muttered in astonishment, "you knew. You knew he'd end up like you." The disgust churned in her gut like snakes. "Aren't you productive," she scoffed, shaking her head. "Corrupting people even after you're gone."

Gold's eyes were blue, like the sky or the edge of the ocean near the horizon.

Like Hook's used to be.

Emma blinked slowly, holding back the maelstrom of emotion churning in her heart. Well. She straightened up, stretched, then called the paramedics for an ambulance. They told her to wait there with the body, and she called David.

"Emma?" He asked blearily, and she said nothing. "Emma?" She inhaled, then sighed.

"Yeah."

"Emma, it's gotta be three in the morning." She made a noise of assent. "What is it?" He sounded genuinely worried, and she marveled at that for about five seconds before remembering there was a dead man on the floor.

"Hook is handcuffed in my car," she blurted before realizing how that sounded.

"What?"

"Hook killed Gold and stole his magic?" But that wasn't much better.

"What?"

"Just- just come to Gold's shop," she said, finally. "I've called the paramedics already."

"Call Belle," David said before he hung up. "Or we should at least find someone who knows where she is." Emma snorted. That was going to be fun. Because of course they should go find Rumplestiltskin's girlfriend at three in the morning to tell her that her boyfriend's ex-wife's boyfriend had murdered him. Of course.

"Only in Storybrooke," she laughed, dialling Belle's number, high on fear and panic, grief and stress.

"Hi," Emma muttered, listening to the phone ring, "Just called to tell you Hook kind of killed Gold and took his magic with some crazy dagger wizard stuff, so you should maybe come down to the shop."

"What?" Belle gasped, and Emma sighed.

"Oops."

The paramedics arrived after Belle. The poor girl was crying, and insisted on seeing Gold's body, despite the fact that Emma specifically told her that it was a rather gruesome sight. "His guts are everywhere," is what she specifically said, to which Belle responded by clutching her mouth and whimpering and Emma responded by thumping her head on the hood of her car. Hook chuckled, and Belle turned her furious tear-stained face on him.

"How dare you," she hissed, and Hook immediately sobered up. "How dare you!" She strode over to his door, and Emma clicked the locks shut in preparation for what was surely to come. Belle tried angrily to open the car door, but when that failed she settled for hitting the window next to Hook's head as punctuation in her righteously apoplectic diatribe. "You vile, foul pirate!" Slam. "How dare you murder an innocent, " thump, "good-hearted," smack, "wonderful man!" Thwack. " How dare you walk into his home and tear him apart!" Thwam. " You're doomed!" Clunk. "You're heartless and horrible!" Shump. "You'll die alone!" Twump. "And you'll deserve it, too!" Plonk. She collapsed, seething and soaked in tears against the window, banging on it with rapidly-bruising fists. "You deserve all the evil in the world." She looked up at him, suddenly, and he blinked at her. "I'll find a way," she said quietly. "I'll make you suffer for the rest of your life."

Hook looked down at her with a strange, fond sort of sadness and smiled. "I know you will," he said. Belle immediately drew herself up to her full height. She shook her head with wide, disgusted eyes.

"You know nothing about me," she spat.

"Untrue," he replied pleasantly. "I was you." Belle blanched, shivered, then turned on her heel and strode furiously away to volley further insults at the paramedics for not letting her see Gold's body.

"And what are you, now?" Emma asked nobody in particular. "What are you now." David came back, a faintly green color lurking suspiciously on his forehead and cheeks. "You saw the body?" She asked, and he shook his head.

"Hook did that?" She nodded. "Wow."

"Something's wrong with him."

"That's for sure," David sighed, lowering his head to his knees. The corner of her mouth turned up in what was almost a smile.

"That's not what I meant. Whatever Gold was..." Emma paused, looking for the right way to describe what she'd seen. "It's like Hook inhaled it. He is it now."

"He's got magic?" Evidently, David hadn't completely absorbed what she'd told him half an hour ago.

"Yeah," she said, sharing a great measure of his surprise. "And two hands." David gave her a pained look, groaned and rested his head on his knees again.

Regina was not especially happy, either. As if calling her at four in the morning wasn't enough, the reason for the call had her fuming.

"Hook is the Dark One?" She scoffed. "That pathetic, scheming little weasel!" She began murmuring something that seemed like either curses or curses, and Emma just nodded obligingly over her coffee. She was thinking about Hook, still waiting in the back of her car, quiet and somehow more at peace than she had ever seen him.

"Yeah, weasel," David leaned back, surprisingly awake now. "What does that mean, that he's the Dark One?"

Regina rolled her eyes. "It means that you've got one of the most powerful magical beings in all the realms sitting in the back of your car." She turned to Emma, suddenly remembering. "Do you have the dagger?" The look in her eyes was unnerving, hungry, as if she would be willing to devour Hook's very soul if it meant she could have what he had.

Emma stared back at her. "And if I do?"

"Well you'd better give it to me," she said frankly, as if it was the simplest thing. "I can take care of it."

"Why?" Emma snorted, "Didn't you learn your lesson with Graham?" Regina flinched. "People don't like to be used."

"I simply wish to help," Regina said, somewhat flustered now.

"No," Emma said immediately, flatly. David looked at her strangely. "No." Regina's look had lost some of it's hunger and gained curiosity.

"Why not?" She swished closer to Emma. "He's a murderer. You're the Sheriff, you're supposed to put him in jail." She tilted her head and smiled a very fake smile. "How are you going to do that if he can escape at any time?"

Emma leaned back and smiled stiffly at her. "I'm sure I'll manage." She shifted as if to get up. "You two can catch me up later. "

"Where are you going?" David asked, taking her glass of water as she stood.

"Well," she shrugged on her jacket. "I'm supposed to be putting a murderer in jail, right?" She shot a bright smile at Regina on the way out.

She hardly noticed herself moving down the stairs until she was on the front porch. She could see Hook, sitting straight in the back of the car, not even tired. There was something lonely about him, as if all his life his revenge had been a constant companion and now it had left him. She braced herself and swung into the driver's seat. Hook blinked at her.

"That dagger controls you." Not a question, not even a doubt. Hook nodded, and Emma tensed. "Regina wanted it."

"It's the only thing that can kill me now." He smiled, even though there was nothing to smile about.

"You let me take it," she said quietly, understanding.

"Of course." At her questioning look, his smile grew fonder, softer. "My life's purpose is met, Swan. If you were to kill me, I would die satisfied in your arms." She swallowed, afraid to turn and look him in the eye.

"But you knew I wouldn't," she finished for him. She looked into the rear-view mirror, and met his warm eyes.

"Not at all." At this, she bent, as though she had punched in the stomach. Her fingers were constricting on the steering wheel.

"Don't you dare," she told him faintly. "Don't you ever put your life in my hands."

"I couldn't possibly," he smirked. She shook her head, and started the car.

She didn't look back once.


	3. Let the Morning Come

The station was quiet, dawn breaking grey-blue like an old bruise across the horizon. The light hit the glass as they walked in, fracturing into their eyes and blinding them both for a moment. Hook made an odd noise, squinting away from the light like it burned him.

Emma blinked, and neon-bright spots swept across her vision and dizzied her.

"Come on," she said, breaking the silence for the first time since she started driving. "You need some sleep, and I need some coffee." She pushed him gently, and he stumbled, looking back at her gratefully when she caught him.

"I believe you're right, Swan." He shuffled the rest of the way into the cell, and paused once he realized that he'd be sitting on his hands. She smiled blandly, unhooking the cuffs from around his wrists, and pushed him down onto the bed.

"Sleep," she said, maneuvering him into lying down. He balked, snatching her hand when she tried to stand. He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. "We'll talk later." He nodded obligingly, laying his head back onto the pillow, flickering eyes still gazing trustingly up at her and warm fingers gripping hers tightly. She sat again.

When they finally drifted closed, she slid her hand from his and drifted out of the cell. She paused at the lock, though. Considering it, Regina's hungry eyes flashed into her mind. Emma hummed, finally deciding that locking the cell was for his protection more than hers. Nevertheless, theclick of the lock was unsatisfying and unusually loud. She stood, blinking slowly at an unresponsive Dark One.

"Coffee," she reminded herself. "You need coffee."

"And a good one-night stand," a derisive voice from behind her smirked. Emma turned, glare at the ready, to find Regina looking perfectly put-together and not at all like she just ran to her mother to tell her that their erstwhile pawn had gone and murdered her almost-stepfather-slash-mentor-slash-frenemy. Not at all. "Honestly, the tension in this room couldn't be cut with an axe."

"Thanks," Emma smiled falsely, then let her expression drop. "What are you doing here."

"Just... dropping by." Emma could feel her eyelids rising. "See if you... needed anything."

"No thanks, Mayor Mills, we're all good here, right Emma? Right!" Ruby swept through in a flood of red miniskirt and hyperactive micro-management. Regina immediately began to retract into herself. "I brought breakfast!" She grinned widely.

"Thanks, Ruby, you're a lifesaver," Emma sighed, as Regina slunk out with narrowed eyes. She made a note to tell Snow and David that their best friend was evil witch kryptonite.

"No problem!" She shook her dark hair behind her and got some stuck in her lipstick. "Plegh. Oh well."

"Shhhh," Emma halfheartedly tapped her finger to her lips (which were full of waffle and bacon) and pointed at Hook.

"Oh!" Ruby exclaimed, walking over to the cell to look inside. "Who's Mr. Tall, Dark, and Incarcerated?"

"Captain hook," Emma said around another mouthful of eggs.

"What's he in for? Piracy? Embezzlement?"

"Murder. He killed Gold." Ruby's eyes widened.

"Oh, did he now?" She turned back to the cell, wrapping her long fingers around the bars and pressing her face in close. "I never thought he'd really do it," she muttered.

"Hm?" Emma asked.

"Nothing at all," Ruby smiled.

"Hm." She nodded.

Time passed easily. As Emma made the hourly pilgrimage to the break room for coffee, Ruby walked back to the cell.

"Swan?" Hook called, blinking awake. Ruby smiled wickedly, walking somewhat unsteadily on tall black heels. "You're not the Sheriff," He began suspiciously.

"No, dear. I'm not." Hook reeled back, away from Cora's outstretched hands. She reached through the bars, her borrowed fingernails scraping across his cheek. "I'm something worse."

"Cora," he scoffed. "Enough."

"No!" She yelled. "Enough from you! I planned that man's death for over thirty years! I was going to be happy!" He leaned back, her hands stretching impossibly far, yet never seeming to grow. "You stole that from me!"

"Ruby?" Emma called, poking her head around the door. "Can you take a look at this?"

"Yeah, sure," said Ruby- Cora- leaning back in a chair across the room reading a magazine. "What do you need?"

She stood, following Emma out.

Hook slid down his cell wall, shaking.

"Hook?" Emma's voice seemed to filter through water before it reached him, slow as if coming from miles away. "Hook!"

"She's not who she is," He mumbled to her. "You have to be safe."

"Who's not what?" Emma knelt next to him, grasping his head in her hands. "Hook! Hook, you need to stay with me!"

"Your friend is Cora," He slurred, hand tangling once more in hers. She winced, because apparently becoming the Dark One gave you massive strength, but she didn't pull away.

He fell forward onto her shoulder, energy leaking away as if stolen.

"Hook?" She sounded afraid. Alone. Tired.

"Hook?"

There was no reply. Just a silence and the darkness of winter closing in around them. Emma took one shaking bretah. Then another. Then she clutched him closer to her chest, shifting backwards to lean against the wall. David walked in, and she could see the lack of surprise in his eyes.

"It's Ruby," she said. "Cora's Ruby." He nodded, turned to walk away. Thinking better of it, though, he turned again to lock them in.

"Be safe," he told her quietly. You have to be safe. She nodded, and he left.

Then she cried.

When Hook woke again, he felt rested. Renewed. And wet. There was a weight on his chest, and blonde hair splayed over him. He reached up with his hands (hands, and wasn't that interesting?) and stroked it all away to find exactly what he thought he would.

"Good morning, Swan."

She sniffled, and buried her head further in his shoulder.

"I'm alive."

She nodded, and her arms tightened around him.

"Would you like me not to mention this ever again?"

She nodded again.

"Too bad. I'm telling Smee."

She snorted, and made a somewhat icious gesture with the hand closest to his face.

"Only jesting, Swan. I like keeping your secrets. It makes me feel included."

She actually laughed at that, and relaxed into him.

He found he quite liked running his new fingers through her hair. He didn't, however, enjoy her father glaring at him for six hours.

"On the bright side," Emma sighed, now tear-free and well-rested. "You don't have to bunk with Cora." The three of them glanced over at the witch, who was still residing in the waitress' body.

"Yeah," David snorted, "because murdering a man is so much more excusable than whatever she's done."

Emma grimaced and Hook sighed.

"It was one time."

"Yeah, like two days ago!"

wo days ago!"/p


End file.
